Obama & The Lonely Center

By Jonathan Chait The most striking theme in todays Washington Post poll is once again the extraordinary apathy of the liberal Democratic base.  But among likely voters the GOP opens up a mammoth 53-40 advantage.  The enthusiasm gap here is a canyon.   Registered voters basically split on whether they plan to vote for a Republican or a Democrat in the House with 47 favoring the former and 45 the latter.  Heres another interesting finding from the poll pointing in the same direction. One question asks Do you think Obamas views on most issues are too (liberal) for you too (conservative) for you or just about right?

1. 45 say too liberal
2. 45 say just about right
3. Another 9 say too conservative.

Now saying Obama is too conservative is not the same thing as saying you wont vote for the Democrats. The rational left-winger would still vote for the moderate Democrats over the extremist Republicans. But it does show the importance of a sizeable block of dissastisfied liberal public opinion. Elite opinion usually demands that the president govern from the center. But governing from the center is not working (which is not to say Obama had a superior alternative.) He has spent two years pushing a classic moderate Republican health care reform an economic stimulus program along the lines of what most economic forecasters were calling for a centrist plan to recapitalize banks and a popular and mainstream financial reform bill. But the general political dynamic consists of Republicans decrying socialism liberals denouncing a sell-out and moderate deficit hawks clucking that the deficit hawkery doesnt go far enough. Some insightful commentary on this poisonous dynamic was provided by Tony Blair:

Ironically Blair says activists on the left often assist their right-wing opponents by piling on the pols who lean their way rather than defending them against a conservative onslaught that he says is vicious and begins from the word go.

Blair says the politics of the day can leave ostensibly left-leaning leaders like President Obama in an isolated position with right-wing opponents eager to destroy them and the activist left (more often than not) happy to help. I love my own politics and progressives and all the rest of it Blair told ABCs Christiane Amanpour in an unaired portion of his This Week interview from Sunday. But if we have a weakness as a class when the right get after us and attack our progressive leaders instead of defending them we tend to say Yeah well really weve got a lot of complaints about them too. Blair said that the tendency of the left to pile on rather than defend its own leaders can leave their politicians alone to face the right wing attack machine which Blair says is merciless. As Ive stated many times the overwhelming cause of the Democrats perils is that they held overstretched majorities while taking control of government at the outset of a massive economic crisis. But the inability of the left to handle majority status is an important contributor to the dilemma. Its not surprising that Democrats would lose independent voters or that Republicans would be wildly enthusiastic when they control the government and push agressive reforms during an economic calamity. But they sheer sullenness of the liberal base does seem to be avoidable and puzzling.